


what is deserved

by youcouldmakealife



Series: duelling banjos [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: The first time Alexei wants to leave Vancouver, he hasn’t even arrived yet.





	what is deserved

The first time Alexei wants to leave Vancouver, he hasn’t even arrived yet, is mile upon mile in the air, above the clouds. It’s a foolish feeling, considering.

The second time he’s waiting for his luggage, breath coming too fast, like he’s run laps rather than just sat on a plane for hour after torturous hour, rethinking his choice so often it became a manta: _what are you doing_ , then, as they drew closer and closer, _what have you done_.

His North American agent arranged for someone to pick him up, but he’s afraid that there will be no one waiting for him when he steps out, that he’ll be stranded. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know how to ask to get there, even if he did. 

In Arrivals there’s a sign with his name on it. In Cyrillic, which makes it easy to pick out among the Latin alphabet that dominates, the letters swimming before his eyes. The man behind the sign speaks Russian, which should be a relief but doesn’t feel like one. He asks Alexei how his flight was.

“Long,” Alexei says, and though the man looks at him expectantly after, like he’s waiting for Alexei to elaborate, Alexei finds he has nothing else to say.

*

It’s harder than he thought it would be. Perhaps a failure of imagination on his part. 

Not the hockey: the hockey is the same, or, if not exactly the same, similar enough to find comfort in. But everything else: the rapidfire exchanges he can only catch the merest hint of, perhaps a single word, more if it’s about hockey. The effortless camadarie of teammates who’ve been together for years: this is more familiar, something he had to navigate when he first went to CSKA Moscow, but in Moscow he understood the language, in Moscow he had family, friends to turn to. He never quite fit in on that team, but he never felt the _need_ to in the same way. If Alexei doesn’t have the Canucks, Alexei came for nothing. Alexei has nothing.

He can’t go back. He knows the looks he’d get, what people would say: _thinks he can run back home after snubbing us, thought he was too good for the Soviet League, can’t even hack it in the NHL for a season._

He has a contract too. That should probably be the biggest concern, but it isn’t. 

He knows what they’d say.

Julien looks even more out of place than Alexei feels. It’s what draws Alexei to him in the first place, but it isn’t why he stays.

*

Julien’s French is almost impossible to understand, but almost impossible is easier than the English that washes over Alexei like a riptide. It’s easier to learn the idiosyncrasies of something he already has the basis of — and there are so many: the harsh accent, the same items with different words, the artifacts of religion peppered through Julien’s speech, always bitten out, cursed. Quebecois is an entirely different language from French, he’s learning, but he’s also learning it, learning how to understand it, though he’d never speak it himself.

English he learns more slowly, frustratingly slowly, and is comforted by the fact Julien struggles with it even more than he does. That sounds cruel, but he doesn’t mean it that way. It’s a comfort not to be alone in it. It’s a comfort that when Julien doesn’t know something, he looks to Alexei, and sometimes Alexei knows the answer.

*

On the ice they’re incredible together. Incredible separately, but together? 

Alexei has his agent explain what chemistry means, because the word that constantly peppers articles about them is at a far remove from the concept he understands as chemistry, as far from the mute boredom of the periodic table as could possibly be. Doesn’t understand the explanation entirely, but he rethinks it: chemistry is the periodic table, yes, but also chemical reactions. Explosive. That’s another word they use, for their offense. 

Alexei stops wanting to leave.

When the season’s over, when they’ve faltered so close to success and so deep in failure, packing for home leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

*

Alexei doesn’t expect to win the Calder. Julien has three more points than him — you have five more goals, Julien pointed out, but that was irrelevant. Hockey isn’t the North American game he’s seen Canadians and Americans alike claim it as, far from, but the NHL still acts like it is. They’ll give it to Julien, born right in the beating heart of it, Julien, who never left Quebec before he was discovered, who never left Canada until he reached the NHL, because he wasn’t the one tapped for tournaments like Alexei was. They underestimated him. They critically underestimated him. Julien pretends to be grateful for that, for where he landed as a result, but Alexei can’t imagine how deeply it stings.

It’ll go to Julien, who deserves it.

Alexei leaves his parents’ house with their assurances that he’ll win it, acts as assured as they’re behaving, like it’s a foregone conclusion. He can’t act any other way, or they’d ask him why he was leaving. Why travel almost 5000 miles to lose when he’s barely made it home again?

It’s a good question, and he doesn’t know the answer, so he pretends he’s going to win so constantly, so confidently, that perhaps he changes the outcome.

*

In Pearson airport, Julien wraps his arms around him and doesn’t let go.

“I saw you a month ago,” Alexei says, eyes darting around, uncomfortable, to see if anyone’s looking, if anyone’s recognized them. Julien finally releases him before he’s finished checking.

*

While they wait to be shuffled from cocktails to show time, Alexei and Julien argue about who’s going to win the Calder.

Alexei maintains that it will be Julien, now that he doesn’t have to pretend otherwise. Julien, contrary as ever, argues the complete opposite.

“Why do you think it’s going to go to one of you?” Hugh asks. “You’re not the only two nominated.”

Hugh, who’s here as a Norris nominee, has been sticking close to them. He never did that at home, but here they’re the only other Canucks, so perhaps it makes sense. Alexei wishes he’d go somewhere else, if only because they’re forced to communicate in English, because it’d be rude to switch to French in front of him, communicate in a way he doesn’t understand. Not that it seemed to matter much to the Anglophones, but Alexei supposes that’s different. 

Alexei raises his eyebrows, and beside him Julien makes a noise Alexei thinks Hugh should interpret as rude. Alexei certainly does.

Hugh rolls his eyes, and his girlfriend laughs, and of course it goes to one of them. Of course it does.

*

Alexei didn’t believe he was going to win, but he wasn’t so unprepared that he didn’t have a speech written. He’s thankful for it, as inarticulate as it sounds, as he feels, the lights on the stage burning his eyes and making the words blur, careful English transcription, the letters spidery and uncertain, so unlike his handwriting in Russian.

It’s easy, once he just has to list names. Vancouver management, his Russian and North American agents, his team, family. Julien, who assisted on so many of his goals, who followed through with so many of his passes, sent them home.

Julien’s beaming at him when he finds him after, and he’s surprised. Surprised, even though he’s almost certain he’d be beaming at Julien had he won. He can’t know that though. There’s no point having faith in hypotheticals.

“You should have won,” Alexei says, when there’s finally enough space between them and admirers to avoid being overheard. He says it in French nonetheless. There are more than a few French speakers milling around, but it’s safer. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s ungrateful. He isn’t. But Julien should have won.

“You deserved it,” Julien says, without a moment of hesitation. Alexei doesn’t know how he can say that and keep smiling. How he can sound so honest. 

*

“You deserved it,” Julien says, late that night, when the shine has worn off a little, but not entirely, the two of them tipsy and exhausted, duelling jet lags, Julien’s brain telling him it’s early, Alexei already feeling the next morning. Alexei can barely keep his eyes open, but he keeps telling Julien he should have won, because he’s irritated by it, by the way it turned out contrary to his expectations, by the way Julien took it in his stride so easily, like he was used to disappointment.

“You deserved it,” Julien says, after a pause. The words aren’t effortless like every other time, not reflex, but measured and thoughtful. He says it soft and slow, and this is the time Alexei believes him.


End file.
